|
Hello thread! I've got a 10 months old, old English bulldog who is adorable. However she's recently started getting a bit picky with her food and it's caused me to start doing a little research, including finding out that grain free is actually bad.. I had no idea. My question is, is this food low enough in its percentage of legumes to be fine? I personally think it's a very low percentage but I have zero experience and have only just found out about this, so would appreciate any other input. At the moment, we're trying to get her to eat 400g of that, along with 330g (I think it is) of wet food from the same company each day, spread over 2 meals. According to their calculations, for her weight (33kg) she should be having 380g of dry and 530g wet per day. However, the wet food is loving expensive and she's not even eating all of her food each meal anyway. She gets a good number of treats during the day, normally fried fish which is her favourite or other high meat content treats. Nothing over the top, she is a touch over weight currently which is another reason she's getting slightly less food. The idea is that we don't increase her food amount as she's growing, till she's the right weight. She's out for about an hour's walk each day on average and has play sessions etc too. She's not overly active or inactive for a bulldog. I think she has a good balance personally.. Anyway, yeah.. is this puppy dry food ok RE grains/legumes and should I be worried she's not eating everything even though it's less than she should be eating anyway according to the supplier? https://www.lilyskitchen.co.uk/for-dogs/puppy/chicken-and-salmon-dry-food-for-puppies-BDPDC.html#pos=3 Once she's finished growing and out of her puppy stage, were looking at moving her to a different food anyway, so while I'm here, it you'd be willing to have a look at that and give me your thoughts to, it would be much appreciated! https://wolfworthy.co.uk/pages/wolfworthy-original-80-20-ingredients
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2024 12:09
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 8, 2024 11:03 |
|
|
Currently she's having the first one, the puppy food, mixed with the same brand wet food. Also thanks for advice, I'm still not sure she's having too many calories, as per the food company's website she's undereating, which I find a little hard to believe considering she's regularly not finishing her food. How do I know exactly how much food she should have? We take the food up when shea finished fyi so she doesn't have access to it all day..
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2024 21:10
|
|
|
Crooked Booty posted:If she is overweight, she is eating too much. It's really that simple. The bag will tell you to overfeed. If you are having to doctor the food to encourage her to finish it and she is already overweight, you aren't doing her any favors. If I were you, I would stop doing things to encourage her to eat, pick up the food after 10 minutes, and see if she's still fat in a couple weeks. If she gets too thin, you'll have to reevaluate, but considering 95% of bulldog puppies are overweight, I'd be surprised if that happens. More likely than not she'll still be sorta fat and you'll need to cut back on the food more. It can't be stated enough times that keeping your dog lean, especially during growth, will pay dividends on their mobility and health a decade from now. To be clear, we're not encouraging her to eat more *at all*. She's doing a great job of only eating what she wants/needs and regularly leaves food if you look at my first post, that's what got me looking into this in the first place so I'd appreciate you didn't try to imply we're intentionally overfeeding and fixing her to have more than she needs... The whole point of me posting here is to try and work out how to work out exactly what she needs and that she gets that, rather than just going on what the manufacturer states... Clearly i wasn't clear enough with that in the first place. Again, she is only SLIGHTLY overweight and I do mean slightly. She's a big dog, she's very strong, she gets regular exercise, she's not eating everything because my opinion is that she doesn't think she needs it and that's what I'm investigating right now, so she's not having it all and she is managing her own food intake. We take the food away when shes finished and she gets a little added for her 2nd meal to bring it up to where the calculator says it should be. If she doesn't eat it at the end of the day, it goes in the bin.. EDIT: if it's relevant at all, her dad is 45kg and her mum is just under 40, she was also the biggest of the litter. Just to be clear, I value your Input but I'd appreciate it more if you checked what I'd said before casting judgement on how we're doing things and jumping to conclusions etc.. Ragnar Gunvald fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Feb 7, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2024 01:33
|
|
|
Culex posted:if a company tells a person to feed less than their dog needs to live, and their dog starves to death, welcome to lawsuit town. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking, but in the UK we don't really have much of a lawsuit culture etc and I wanted to get a better opinion rather than just making the decision myself. For long term etc she has access to ostrich bone, a rams horn and another bone. She's not overly fussed about other stuff and even the other treats etc she's had little interest in for awhile so we've not been feeding them to her, but we try to stick to natural treats, like the odd rabbits ear, chicken foot and dried sprats. She also has low cal treats for training as thats what we have used since she was 8 weeks old
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2024 01:37
|
|
|
Well I'm sorry I'm autistic and I don't have the same loving communication skills you do, I'm doing the best I can and having some twat pick everything apart word for word doesn't really help me at all in all honesty. I hope you feel better about yourself by correcting me on exactly what I said even if it wasn't what I meant. You've also not really helped me at all in the slightest so far, the things I've asked about, such as being able to accurately work out how much food she should have rather than trial and error has been glossed over in favour of having a go at me. If anyone else wants to provide some actual help I'd appreciate it. Otherwise I'll go back to doing what I'm doing. Ragnar Gunvald fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Feb 7, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2024 05:10
|
|
|
Lanky Coconut Tree posted:That seems really chonky for a 10 month old pup. I'm not familiar with that breed but a quick Google led me to these weight charts which indicates she's very overweight. I would normally agree with you, but it's a "newer" breed. She and her whole family are all much bigger than reported online. Both height, length and weight. The family is well documented and registered for the last 5 generations too. Because it's so poorly documented as a breed it's hard to find something concrete. Which is also why I was asking about being able to calculate myself. Do I need to post photos to show everyone she's not morbidly obese. But her whole family is the same, again, I've checked. Siblings, parents etc. Also with noting the vet has said her weight is fine, we have checked this stuff. Her food is weighed out every meal too. I've come here for information and a discussion and feel like everyone is simply telling me things I'm already doing and assuming I'm an idiot at this point.. The focus is on your assumptions about my inability to see my dogs weight, that I've not checked with a vet, that the online information is 100% accurate etc etc.. I didn't ask for help with any of those things. I wanted to hear opinions on the foods I posted, the grain free thing as that was actually eye opening to me as vets here are still recommending grain free so that was actually helpful. But asking about how to judge her actual needs based on Goon opinions (something I normally trust implicitly and haven't had a bad experience with in many years) seems to be a little bit of a difficult topic for this thread. Ragnar Gunvald fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Feb 7, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2024 19:07
|
|
|
Well I'm always happy to post photos of her! Lol Here she is from a couple of weeks ago:    This is about a month after we got her, she came to us quite underweight unfortunately.  And this is her right now, after a very busy day of walking and exposure training. 
|
|
#
¿
Feb 14, 2024 21:53
|
|
|
Hey! We've actually just switched to dry food only for her now and she's lost a touch of weight as we wanted. She's very happy right now tbh. If anything she's a bit over tired from moving from one to two walks a day now she's pretty much fully grown and it's taking a bit of adjustment for her. We're just actively keeping an eye on her weight right now with the additional exercise but she seems stable and loving life thankfully.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2024 02:55
|
|
|
Epitope posted:The vet was frustrating, they kinda just shrugged. I know a vet isn't a nutritionist, but I thought they'd at least have a direction to check. I talked to some mushers. They gave some recommendations for dense kibbles. One also said "meat is the best, and will give them smaller shits" but of course we're not just gonna feed the dog steaks. Ah well, at least feeling a bit more knowledgeable I get that, turns out our doggo has some kind of allergy somewhere and rather trying to work out what it was they just want us to feed her expensive prescription food. She vomits a little each day that she's off it and it's caused her pneumonia so obviously we're concerned about her a lot right now. But I'd feel much better if we could identify what the actual allergen is rather than just avoiding "everything". I guess it's just going to take us a long time to figure it out. Are actual allergen tests for dogs a thing even?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 9, 2024 11:47
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 8, 2024 11:03 |
|
|
Oh I've no issue giving her the expensive stuff, tbh it's about the same price as the posh poo poo we was giving her before. I'm more venting that it's taken so long to get to this point as she shouldn't have been feeling like this in the first place had we been listened to 9 months ago when we first raised it. Honestly the dog can get anything she wants or needs, so long as she's happy and comfortable, I just worry and like I say, annoyed at how long it's taken to get to this point
|
|
#
¿
Apr 9, 2024 23:45
|
|